chime, white screen, no logo or spinner

I am not sure as how to do a safe boot, not to mac savy yet. I had a backup drive that i installed and same problem. Forgot to mention that i also have sound when i hit the volume keys.

A safe boot is pretty easy: Press the power button, then hold down the SHIFT key as soon as you hear the startup chime, until you get the Apple logo and scrolling wheel. A safe boot starts the OS with all the extras shut off, which is useful when you're troubleshooting a problem. If the problem goes away when you've shut off the extra bells and whistles, then something in the bells and whistles is the source of the trouble. Safe boot also forces as Disk Utility check of the boot drive, which you can usually only do when booted from a second drive. This is similar to an Error Checking boot in Windows.

I tried to boot both drives externally, still get just the white screen. I tried booth drives externally to the other macbook and i can see both drives. I believe either the display cable or motherboard is the problem. i am going to try hooking up an external display to see what happens.

As long as you have the drive out of the MB and can mount it on the other computer as an external drive, try using Disk Utility on the second computer to repair the external drive - both the drive mechanism itself, and the volume on the drive. The indented name you recognize from the desktop icon is the logical volume: the OSX-formatted environment the computer communicates with. The Seagate/Toshiba/Samsung/WD+alphanumeric name above it is the physical drive on which the logical volume lives. Disk Utility repairs different things depending on which one you select, so it's a good idea to repair both when you can.

I tried an external monitor on the minidisplay port, although it did not come up with the Main Screen it did come up with the extended screen mode. So.....what would you surmise is the problem? Display cable or logic board, i do have the backlit screen, i dimmed it down and tried the flashlight trick but do not see anything. Also is there a keystroke to put the minidisplay port in Mirror mode? Thanks for your expertise on this subject, also how do i mark Answer Accepted?